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If Millennials Ruled the Corporate World …

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… they would focus less on enriching their stock portfolios and more on developing employees and giving back to their communities.

Engaging millennials—attracting, recruiting, and retaining them—has confounded large enterprises since the early 2000s, when members of this generation began entering the workforce. In some respects, it’s no surprise many blue-chip companies find millennials (those born between 1980 and 1999, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) so puzzling. After all, the individuals running those businesses, by and large, aren’t millennials; they don’t “get” millennials; and some even regard them negatively, as privileged or entitled.

Regardless of older generations’ perceptions of this younger generation, Gen Y (as millennials are also known) represents the talent pool from which companies will draw both current and future leaders, and what a growing pool it is. The Pew Research Center says millennials are set “to surpass the outsized Baby Boom generation as the nation’s largest living generation” this year, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that at 34 percent of the U.S. workforce, millennials currently comprise the largest generational cohort inside organizations. The BLS expects millennials’ to make up 50 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020.

“There is no doubt about the benefits organizations and their leaders can realize from understanding what motivates millennials and from effectively engaging them,” says Barry Salzberg, CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (Deloitte Global).

To shed light on millennials’ values and professional goals, Deloitte Global surveyed nearly 8,000 young professionals across 29 countries for their perspectives on business priorities and leadership. All survey respondents were born after 1982, hold a college degree, and work full-time.¹

“The results confirm what we’ve learned and are putting into practice at Deloitte, most notably that businesses need to focus as much on their people and purpose as they do on their products and profits,” says Salzberg. “The survey data also reveals some dramatic differences in the leadership aspirations of millennials in developed versus emerging markets. This reinforces our global but local approach to markets. All organizations can use these insights to inform their corporate values and the ways they engage this generation globally.”

Millennials’ Business Values and Priorities

While many traditional benchmarks of corporate leadership focus on company size and financial performance, the millennials surveyed draw on a much broader set of characteristics when deciding whether a company is a leader. In their eyes, industry-leading companies are committed to the following activities, listed in order of importance:

• treating employees well (42 percent)

• positively impacting society (36 percent)

• sustaining strong financial performance (35 percent)

• maintaining a record of creating innovative products or services (35 percent)

If millennials led their organizations, their top three priorities would include:

• ensuring the long-term future of the organization (cited by 43 percent of respondents)

• focusing on employees’ well-being (cited by 37 percent)

• investing in employees’ growth and development (cited by 32 percent).

Notably, millennials’ putative business agenda contrasts with the imperatives they believe their organizations’ senior leadership teams currently prioritize. While the respondents believe their senior leaders focus on the long-term future of their organizations (as they would), millennials also think today’s leaders focus too much on their own personal income and their organizations’ short-term financial goals, and that they emphasize those activities at the expense of employees and the communities in which they operate.

Source: “Mind the gaps: The 2015 Deloitte Millennial survey”

In short, an organization’s sense of purpose is critical to millennials. Six out of 10 surveyed say their company’s purpose is part of the reason they chose to work there, and they see a link between an organization’s sense of purpose and its ability to recruit and retain employees. Close to two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents who say they work for an employer with a strong sense of purpose also say their employers recruited “a lot of people” in the past year, compared with 48 percent of respondents who say they work for an organization lacking a strong sense of purpose. On the retention front, more than half (57 percent) of respondents who work for an organization with a strong sense of purpose say their organizations achieve high levels of employee satisfaction, compared with only 23 percent of respondents at organizations without a strong sense of purpose.

Ambition and Talent Gaps

Big companies in developed markets may continue to face an uphill battle trying to recruit millennials from those markets. According to the survey, more than one-third (35 percent) of millennials in developed economies view large enterprises as desirable places to work, and only 38 percent wish to become the most senior executive in their current organization, compared to 65 percent of millennials in emerging markets who do.

In addition to appearing less ambitious than millennials in emerging markets, those in developed markets also appear less entrepreneurial: Only 11 percent of respondents from developed markets say their next career move would be to start their own businesses—half the proportion seen in emerging markets.

“The ambition gap highlights the changing face of the global workforce and signals a trend businesses should consider for the coming years,” says Salzberg. “Regardless of the reasons for the differences between millennials in emerging and developed markets, business leaders around the world have some serious questions to contemplate: Will sufficient talent emerge to lead businesses in mature markets? And will the apparent greater drive seen among millennials in emerging markets result in businesses in those geographies outperforming organizations in traditionally strong economies?”

If Millennials Ruled the Corporate World …

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